Black Economic Empowerment Blog

Skills Development

July 25, 2018

For those of you who aren't aware of the Employee Tax Incentive (ETI) then read on. Before we go into the nitty gritty of the ETI, I have read that it will be extended beyond February 2019. It is critical to the success of the YES, which in itself is somewhat dependent on our communist leader, bolshie bob, publishing an amendment that actually encourages companies to make use of it (we sit in hope - history doesn't favour this though).

The ETI is also a very positive incentive for skills development. We have figured out a way to get almost all the points for skills development using the ETI and for far less financial consideration than bolshie bob's ludicrous 6% of payroll. Call me and I'll tell you more - remember, all the points for a fraction of the money.

Back to the ETI - courtesy of SARS (the link is above).

Why is there an ETI?

Millions of young South Africans are excluded from participating in economic activity, and as a result suffer disproportionately from unemployment, discouragement and economic marginalisation. High youth unemployment means young people are not gaining the skills or experience needed to drive the economy forward. This lack of skills can have long-term adverse effects on the economy.

In South Africa the current lack of skills and experience as well as perceptions regarding the restrictiveness of labour regulations make some prospective employers reluctant to hire the youth.

As a South African employer, you now have a great opportunity to boost the employment of young work seekers.

What is it?

The ETI is an incentive aimed at encouraging employers to hire young work seekers. It was implemented with effect from 1 January 2014.

What are the benefits for employers?

The benefits of the ETI are:

It will reduce the employers cost of hiring young people through a cost-sharing mechanism with government, by allowing you to reduce the amount of Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) you pay while leaving the wage received by the employee unaffected.

For example, employers who are registered for PAYE, and who employ a person for the full month of February 2014 and earns R2000, will get R1 000 off their monthly PAYE liability (provided that the employee is a qualifying employee based on all the other remaining requirements). For more information on how the ETI works, click here.

Employers will be able to claim the incentive for a 24 month period for all employees who qualify. Click here for more information.

The incentive amount differs based on the salary paid to each qualifying employee and whether the qualifying employee was employed after the inception of the ETI programme on 1 October 2013. ETI may only be claimed for a total of 24 qualifying months. Click here for more information.

This incentive will complement existing government programmes with similar objectives e.g. learnership agreements.

The aim of the ETI is to facilitate the increased employment of young work seekers.

Who qualifies?

The employer is eligible to claim the ETI if the employer–

Is registered for Employees’ Tax (PAYE), or must be eligible to register for PAYE (e.g. the employer can't register just to claim ETI, other registration requirements must be met)

Is not in the national, provincial or local sphere of government

Is not a public entity listed in Schedule 2 or 3 of the Public Finance Management Act (other than those public entities designated by the Minister of Finance by Notice in the Gazette)

Is not a municipal entity

Is not disqualified by the Minister of Finance due to the displacement of an employee or by not meeting the conditions as may be prescribed by the Minister by regulation.

April 10, 2018

The scene – a room in a prime office in Meintjies Street Pretoria. A nondescript bearded man in a Mandela shirt is reading the news online whilst he fondles his made-to-scale replica of Marx’s gravestone.

Man (muttering) – who the hell is Alan Hirsch anyway? What does he mean the president needs to bear in mind that “more certainty is needed about policies on mining, land and black economic empowerment to encourage new investment.” There’s plenty of certainty, we have conducted empirical research – there is absolute certainty that the white monopolistic capital will fall and the economy will be nationali…………

The phone rings

Man – Davies.

Secretary – Minister, I have Twusi Vala on the line for you.

Twusi – hello is that bolshie bob, I mean minister davies?

Bolshie bob, emphasising the uppercase – it’s Minister Davies to you Mr Vala (under his breath – if I ever get my hands on that blogger who gave me that name, I’ll……..)

Twusi – listen minister I have a problem. I own 100% of my business. I was born in Hammanskraal and I employ skilled white people and foreigners and I can’t get a BEE certificate because my turnover is over R50m. My clients don’t want to know me. I’m non-compliant.

Bolshie bob – you know that you could implement all the other elements in the scorecard and get a good score – your ownership and management etc look good.

Twusi – listen minister, I didn’t join the struggle to be poor. Those elements are just too hard to implement. They cost too much money and take much time. Anyway how I am supposed to train black people if I only employ whites and foreigners?

Bolshie bob – our intention was always to favour you but only up to a poi……………………

Twusi – I don’t care. This is not fair – fix it otherwise I will raise this at the highest levels of government, I mean the ANC

The man returns to the article he was reading.

Bolshie bob – doesn’t this Alan Hirsch know that the Chinese are breaking down the doors to invest here – what policy uncertainty is this?

The phone rings again

Bolshie bob – Davies.

Secretary – Minister, I have Rivian Veddy on the line from Durban.

Bolshie bob – Rivian, so good to speak to you again

Veddy – cut out the small talk comrade minister. I didn’t join the struggle to be poor. I’ve been subsidising the rural house of zoomer for years. All I want in exchange is all the lucrative contracts in KZN. This fucking Nene is now putting the brakes on my supply chain connections. I need a BEE certificate. I turnover close to a billion (that SARS knows about). How the hell am I going to get that level 1 that I faked, I mean declared up until now. Now it’s about checking financials and shit like that. Have you seen how your revised codes have marginalised Indians? I have a family to support and they are worth shit on your new scorecard. The monarch from the rural house of zoomer is now demanding more cash and I can’t get this out of the state contracts that I am entitled to. Get me a certificate now or I’ll take it up with the highest echelons in government, I mean the ANC.

Tendai – naturalised at great expense minister. There isn’t a single verification agency that will recognise me as black now – in the past it was an affidavit. Now I go for a verification and they tell me I’m white. White!! Me!! – the closest thing I ever came to white was when I took that farm in Mazoe. Now that bob, is he a relation of yours – what with you having the same first name, has been booted out of government in Zim I need to make my fortune here. This is unacceptable. Malusi does not come cheap and I’m still white!!!

Rattled the bearded man scrolls through his rolodex and calls his secretary.

Bolshie bob – please get the awesome awdoz on the phone.

Secretary – I think you mean the Acting BEE Commissioner, Minister

Boshie bob – that blogger again! if I ever get my red claws on him. Yes her – I wish to meet the Acting BEE Commissioner urgently.

Five minutes later a knock is heard on the door.

Bolshie bob – come in.

Awesome awdoz – Minister, you called for me.

Bolshie bob – yes Commissioner. We have a problem here. I have just taken three phone calls in five minute, black business is revolting because they can no longer comply with the BEE codes because they are too hard or too complicated……..

Bolshie bob – Exactly. When we put these revised codes in place we designed them to make it almost impossible for white companies to comply so that we could give black business a hand up. I never expected that these black businesses would get so much business and then turn over more than R50m. That wasn’t the plan, they aren’t supposed to be emulating these white monopolistic capitalists.

Awesome awdoz – these white businesses are devious. Do you know that they have found a way to get around the 51% ownership rule using the modified flow through principle. Try as I might to discourage this behaviour they have carried on regardless.

Bolshie bob – have you seen that some of these companies are doing better under the new codes than they did under the old codes. This is an untenable situation – we need to punish them more. Do you have any ideas

Awesome awdoz – we must get rid of the modified flow through principle resulting in instant promotion to a level 2 immediately. But we can't leave it at that.

Bolshie bob – what else did you have in mind?

Awesome awdoz – let’s just promote large black businesses that turnover more than R50m to a level 2 or 1 so that you can appease your constituents.

Bolshie bob – awesome idea awdoz, I mean Commissioner (if I get my hands on that blogger). But let’s not make it too easy for the white monopoly capitalists to get to that 51% black ownership level through some nefarious scheme.

Awesome awdoz – we could remove the modified flow through principle and insist that large companies undergo an ownership verification. There’ll be no modified flow through principle then.

Boshie bob – exactly. But why should we stop there? I see the president has launched the Youth Employment Service. Let’s bring that into the scorecard. Hell, whilst we are at it I think we should also get white business to fund tertiary education. We need to make it a little costly so that they rapidly become financially unviable. Do you see it Commissioner – we’ll crush white businesses with paperwork and expense.

Awesome awdoz (pondering) – I’ve got an idea. How about we split up the skills development spend into two sections. Half to be spent on black staff and the rest on bursaries.

Bolshie bob – awesome plan aw… I mean Commissioner. Maybe we should sweeten the deal a little. Not split it halfway – perhaps 3.5% on black people and 2.5% on bursaries. Do you see the brilliance in your plan?

Bolshie bob does not wait for an answer

Bolshie bob – the 3.5% of payroll figure can be made up of internal spend and salaries. The bursaries are a raw cost – straight off the bottom line. I’ve heard that this will cost Standard Bank about R400m a year. They’ll have to raise their bank charges to make up this shortfall. We’ll create a black bank that doesn’t need to worry about these expenses that will undercut the large institutions. We will be rid of white monopoly capital in a short time.

Awesome awdoz – splendid idea, those concepts had been bobbing in my mind for a while. You’ve banged the nail on the head there Minister. But what about the Youth Employment Service.

Bolshie bob – yes, the YES. Hmmm – those white monopoly capitalists have been very reluctant to hire the black youth, that’s why our universities are full of disgruntled students. Can we not tie the YES into this in some way?

Awesome awdoz – how about this for an idea? We incentivise the white monopoly capitalists to embrace certain YES targets and they might be promoted a level. They’ll never get to the levels that black businesses are automatically promoted to anyway – I say let’s leave them to employ the youth and black business can continue doing business.

Bolshie bob – I like that idea. But we can’t make it that easy. We need to put in a few punitive caveats………….

Awesome awdoz (jumping off the couch) – they can only be promoted if they get all the points for the bursaries!!!!

Bolshie bob – by Stalin, you’ve got it. And the promotion to an extra level will be very attractive to 51% black-owned businesses too should they ever want to get to a level one. We'll be seen as very fair and reasonable.

Awesome awdoz – thank you minister I’ll get onto drawing up the amendments to the BEE codes. I suppose under Cyril’s government we’ll have to send them out for comment.

Bolshie bob – I suspect that we’ll have to read and consider the comments too. Sometimes I miss the last president. Now if I could just get my hands on that blogger – I’d send him off to Siberia for a winter holiday……

The curtains come down to no applause – the play started four hours late and the audience had long gone home before the performance started.

January 30, 2018

How SANAS loves its paperwork. This is a spinoff from bolshie bob's desire to create paperwork and red tape. How this is going to result in transformation resides only in his red mind.

The internet was trawled for a trainee tracking tool. There are some third party systems you can use. Unfortunately the bee commission doesn't help either - they merely state that every company should develop their own. This is what I would put in a trainee tracking tool. Just headings - you can fill in the detail as you go along. Understand that this is for verification - so you should pad it with lots of documents. ID books, payslips, test results, psycho-analyses, spinal taps and the results of the most recent pencil test.

Trainee Tracking Tool

Learner name, ID number, race gender

Type of learnership/internship/apprenticeship (name)

Ultimate qualification

Duration of learnership

Date started and anticipated completion date

Was the learner employed by the company before the learnership commenced.

July 26, 2016

Not that I have ever voted for the DA. It doesn't matter who I vote for, what does matter is why. I vote because I want to reduce the ANC's power. I once heard the Helen Zille would love to vote for the ANC, she feels that the ANC should have been a good home for her. But alas the crony incompetence of the ANC forced her into the opposition. I can relate.

I always post an anti-ANC post before an election. The news is full of how Zuma uses feudal methods to retain loyalty, part of this is to hire grossly incompetent people in positions (Hlaudi, Dudu, Muthambi and many others) of power. Most of his cabinet are suurstofdiewe, hopelessly out of their league and blissfully unaware of this fact. Alas Rob Davies, aka Rob the Red or Bolshie Bob is not one of those. He's not stupid he's just a rotten commie who has been given a free reign on the economy and is wantonly destroying it. He is obviously very inspired by Zuma's policy of hiring incompetents because his department is fraught with such people.

You imagine Bolshie taking on the job as a national coach of football. He hires people like me as assistant coaches, knowing that we know nothing about football (and I know NOTHING), the only guidance he provides is a game plan that the Uruguayans used in 1930 which no longer works. He then buggers off to the sidelines and waits for the impending disaster whilst spewing 1930s football rhetoric and statistics. "If it works then, then it will work now."

What brought this vitriol on was the exercise I undertook yesterday (a large part of yesterday I stress) in creating an assessment of a client's performance of the revised codes. The calculations are ridiculously complicated for me – someone who is rather well versed in these codes. Complexity aside – the sheer lunacy of these codes come to the fore. The table below shows the same client's skills development costs

Race Group

Modified EAP

Target spend per race group

Target spend per person

AM

45.89%

1,452,367.80

44,011.15

CM

6.54%

206,971.33

20,697.13

IM

2.14%

67,800.95

16,950.24

WM

0.00%

AF

38.56%

1,220,417.17

203,402.86

CF

5.64%

178,423.56

178,423.56

IF

1.24%

39,253.18

9,813.30

WF

0.00%

I've harped on about this a lot in the past. But I still cannot understand why the 6% of payroll is justifiable. How on earth is this company going to spend 203k on the training of African women? You could go to sesame bun and ask him what to do and he'll tell you to sponsor black women at university. This is not feasible. It's never going to be feasible. The sad thing about going to sesame bun and the DTI is that he doesn't know what he's doing either, and neither do his minions.

This is Bolshie social engineering at the stroke of a pen and then leaving the implementation of this to those companies that have to figure out what to do. He's enlisted his equally incompetent state-owned entities to blam this message home, they are equally clueless and just as protected as Bob is.

This is the product of the ANC, if you wish to perpetuate the status quo then be sure to vote Zuma. But the Zimbabwean example has shown that regimes like this will come undone. And when that happens…………… IT'S TOO FUCKING LATE!!!!

July 20, 2016

[E]mployment opportunities are accessible to people only where they live. The objective of the EE Act is not to induce racial migrations to accommodate the statistics. Its objective is accessibility of employment opportunities and it achieves that objective only if it takes account where applicants for the posts are located. Statistics that serve as a tool for that purpose will be statistics that reflect the reality of the population, and the reality is that the races are not distributed uniformly throughout the country, which is not reflected in the Department’s Plan.

The Employment Equity Act has since been changed and it no longer requires an employer to take into account regional demographics when devising EEP targets – it merely allows it to do so if it wishes. It may be that this amendment is unconstitutional because it effectively encourages migration of people far away from their families and communities, thus containing echoes of the apartheid migrant labour system. But a future judgment will have to determine whether this is so.

So sayeth Pierre de Vos in another of his insightful posts. As those who are scholars of Rob's Folly also known as Bolshie Bob's Botched Borscht will know that our Stalinist deludinist has found it fit to include the economically active population (EAP) as a target for his racially representative nation. As we have come to expect from the brains trust at the iDioTIc, the document is big on ideology and short on the most basic clue as to how to implement it.

The ConCourt has come to our aid when it comes to regional and national EAP. You can use both. The ConCourt referred specifically to an EE plan. But I feel confident that we can extrapolate this conclusion into the meat of any BEE scorecard scenario. But you have to read this plan into the IMF's David Lipton's recent speech on the state of the South African economy.

But there is something else going on that has developed with the evolution of the economy. This involves issues that I know are very familiar to you: infrastructure bottlenecks; skills mismatches in the work force; regulations that stifle competition and entrepreneurship and keep that one-third of the labor force unemployed or too discouraged to seek work.

The end result is that a huge part of the labor force is left on the outside looking in, undereducated and with no opportunities for advancement. I’m told, for example, that there are township youth who not only cannot find work, but who grow up without knowing anyone in their circle of family and friends with a job either!

The formal economy is not absorbing them, nor are they able to strike out on their own. There is a crucial structural issue at play here: those included and successful in the advanced economy — large businesses, banks and unionized workers — maintain entry barriers against their potential competitors — small and medium-sized enterprises and the unemployed.

These paragraphs actually refer to the 79% of the EAP that the Prison's Department wants in its employ. Lipton is telling us that the government has in effect let these people down, both through their historical neglect and their ongoing burdensome policies. And once they have washed their hands of these people by pushing them out the school system the private sector is expected to absorb them and make up their educational shortfall by blowing humongous amounts of cash on skilling them, 6% of payroll to be precise.

We are being taken for fools, policies created by buffoons who are not required to understand how an economy or a spaza shop runs. This doesn't specifically mean that we can point fingers at Zoomer and his band of incompetents. We are part of the solution but government needs to make the first move - and that move should be axing Zoomer and his cabinet without a pension.

July 17, 2014

Yesterday's post looked at the total cost of skills development for 9 companies. This table shows how much less money Nene (and SARS) is going to receive. For those MPs who are numerically challenged, the total amount is 2.29 Nkandlas. The going rate for a Nkandla is R246m.

July 16, 2014

The dti'S BROADEDING PARTICIPATION DIVISION have issued the attached notice. It's not very clear when the first certificates will be issued under the new codes because they write English as well as Hlaudi spokes it.

My friends at BEE Matrix reckon business will just get on with it and try and improve their score over time. I don't agree, the ridiculousness of the targets and the sheer cost of implementation will put companies off and then they just won't bother. Yes it'll take a few years but not that many years.

This table is an analysis of thumb sucked JSE listed companies (including the JSE) and the figures could be a bit out. It shows how much many SHOULD have been spent during the period that the Annual Report discusses. Some are 2013 others are earlier. At least we know that the figures will be higher when the new codes kick in. They make for fascinating reading. The larger corporates need to spend a huge amount of money on skills development. Mind you the JSE's target of 24m is not a shabby amount either. What must be borne in mind is that the target spend is DOUBLE (or as the DTI might write DUBBLE) what we're used to. To see this in perspective we need to look at Standard Bank's 2013 annual report. On page 40 it says the company spent R424m, which was 2.9% of payroll (which suggests that my figure of R887m is fairly accurate). Page 131 shows the complete income statement. The Net Profit Before Tax figure for that year was R13.124bn. If we now add on the tax deductible amount of R463.76m off that amount it comes to R12.660bn. That's a fair drop in profitability. This means less money is spent on tax, enterprise development and most importantly SED.

Target Race Group

Company

Salary bill

Target spend (6%)

AM

AF

CM

CF

IM

IF

Standard Bank

14 796 000 000

887 760 000

407 348 726

342 293 033

58 049 696

50 042 841

19 016 280

11 009 425

MTN

6 709 000 000

402 540 000

184 705 502

155 207 080

26 321 669

22 691 094

8 622 616

4 992 041

NASPERS

8 738 000 000

524 280 000

240 565 908

202 146 291

34 282 120

29 553 551

11 230 349

6 501 781

AECI

2 976 000 000

178 560 000

81 932 266

68 847 260

11 675 851

10 065 389

3 824 848

2 214 386

FirstRand

10 620 000 000

637 200 000

292 379 256

245 684 780

41 665 840

35 918 828

13 649 154

7 902 142

Telkom

9 861 000 000

591 660 000

271 483 224

228 125 953

38 688 027

33 351 747

12 673 664

7 337 384

Nampak

3 535 000 000

212 100 000

97 322 097

81 779 256

13 868 997

11 956 032

4 543 292

2 630 327

JSE

405 000 000

24 300 000

11 150 056

9 369 335

1 588 952

1 369 786

520 519

301 353

Nedbank

9 349 000 000

560 940 000

257 387 351

216 281 263

36 679 278

31 620 068

12 015 626

6 956 415

Oh yes you can take the money you don't spend and distribute it EAP-fashion amongst the poor for education purposes. I'm not aware of many investors that would go for this. Are you in the business of banking or handing large amounts of money out on bursaries?

And then there is the issue of productivity vs training. The skills development code appears (you can't say anything more than that with the revised codes, everything "appears"" and nothing is clear) to require companies to spend money on SAQA-aligned programmes. As a multinational you can't send your employees on training back at your parent unless you can show that it "meets SAQA's requirement for recognition". Using Nedbank as an example. Their annual report (page 21) gives a total staff complement of 28,748. Average annual spend per person needs to be R19,512.32. I don't know what the percentage of EAP staff there are but that trainng figure per person is going to be much higher. When are these people going to work?

Who stands to benefit here?

You can't spend R19.5 k on the training of a lowly messenger. You'll never see them at work. It was Anglo who pointed out in their comments of the codes that it just makes sense to throw huge and ugly amounts of skills spend on the educated and higher-up-the-hierarchy Africans. I wouldn't be surprised to see a number of connected people informing Nampak that if they pay for their kids' Michaelhouse school fees they'll get BEE points. Broad-based my foot!

And these codes are broad-based? Not likely and the South African public wants them, champing at the bit they are. At some stage something is going to give and I hope to hell that this realisation doesn't come too late. Every day more of our rights are eroded by poor legislating and we just take it.

As a postscript - we know the codes are truly trying to remove white people from the workplace - or only those white people that fit in with the EAP statistics may work in each organisation (white male 6.4% and white women 6.9%). You still have an obligation as an employer to train your white staff as well. This is over and above the 6%.

November 09, 2011

The world is moving into unpredictable socioeconomic terrain. South Africans need to take responsibility and work themselves out of unemployment. There are very few adults who cannot learn something at almost any age. If only the marchers would shift their focus away from Malema’s exuberant fantasy life towards focusing on establishing and supporting microbusinesses. Tiny businesses may never make them rich, but will certainly go a long way towards healing the devastating indignity of unemployment.

November 12, 2009

And
so begins my posting of useful information.I am unfortunately not an expert on Skills Development but I know a lot
of people who are. Also I am not an expert on inserting tables into the blog and I can't seem to get Word to upload the posts. I'll have to figure this out - hence the scrunched up tables. And BEE is all about tables.

A
BEE score is based on the measurement of a set of elements actually initiated
over a year.Whilst the codes aren’t
specific about what that period should be, most companies are measured over a
financial year.With the current March
to February financial year rapidly coming to an end most companies should have
the necessary BEE processes in place to achieve a better BEE score than the
previous year.Our experience has shown
that this often isn’t the case – there is always a mad scramble to do something
to attract points in the last few months of the financial year.

Most
companies will have regarded it too late to do much more than make desperate
enterprise development or socio-economic development donations and attract
those 20 points, hoping that these will be enough to favourably stack up
against their competitors.There is
another way to earn at least a further six points under skills development in a
very short period of time.

The
skills development is concerned with two measurements

1Spend on skills development

a.3% of payroll under the
generic scorecard spent on the training of black people with a strong emphasis
on black women

b.0.3% of payroll spent on
black disabled people

2Learnerships

5% of staff should be black people on
learnerships.

Learnerships
amount to 6 points on the BEE scorecard.To comply with the learnership requirement 5% of all staff should be
black people registered on learnerships.This measurement is based on the number of people registered on
learnership during the measurement period.It makes little difference to this score whether the learnerships exist
at the beginning of the period or on the last day.

The
added bonus with learnerships is that the salaries paid to the learner whilst
they are on the learnership are considered skills development spend.This would then make a sizable dent in the
skills development spend target of 3% of payroll.From a points’ perspective it would be
beneficial to register a learnership as early as possible within the
measurement period.Nevertheless even if
the learner begins late in the measurement period you can claim their salaries
as skills development spend for the balance on the year which will generate a
few points.And this same learner will
earn you points in the next measurement period.Adding black disabled learners to this programme can attract a further
three points.

The
table below summarises the requirements for skills development, the potential
points’ value for each requirement and offers a few tips for attracting those
points.Don’t forget the four primary
requirements that need to be adhered to before any points can be had under
Skills Development

compliance both with the
Skills Development and Skills Development Levies Acts.

registered with the
applicable SETA

developed
a Workplace Skills Plan (WSP)

have implemented programmes
targeted at developing priority skillsgenerally, and specifically for black people. (this is derived from the
Workplace Skills Plan)

I have italicised the word developed above because it doesn't mean that the plan has to be submitted. The (interminably dodgy) veification manual states that the WSP has to have been submitted, which is not a requirement under the code.

Description

Points

Target

Spend on skills
development spend on black people

·About
40% of the target must be spent on black women

·Skills
development spend includes salaries of people on learnerships

·Overseas
travel for business purposes can be regarded as legitimate skills development
spend

·If
the money is claimed back through the Workplace Skills Plan it can still be
used for points under this element

6

3% of payroll(equivalent to 3% of annual SDL
contribution)

Spend on skills
development spend on black disabled people

About
40% of the target must be spent on black women

Skills
development spend includes salaries of people on learnerships

Siyakha
has a database of suitable disabled people

3

0.3% of payroll(equivalent to 0.3% of annual SDL
contribution)

Number of black
employees participating in learnerships,

·About
40% of the target must be spent on black women

·Consider
cross-sectoral learnerships, not just those that your SETA offers

·These
points can be obtained in a very short period of time

6

5% of staff(this follows the definition of an
employee – it usually is 5% of the number of people listed in your EEA2
submission)

June 04, 2007

I went around the country with Nedbank this time last year delivering the BEE leg of the Nedbank Small Business Seminars. It was a great experience and I got to work with the inimitable Bill Gibson. I'm not involved in this round but I'm getting a lot of queries about the seminars. So I've decided to update my blog with the venues, dates and times. The first day is today.